An examination of the daily relationship between job boredom and later burnout and turnover intentions along with mitigating strategies

Abstract Job boredom is one of the most prevalent aversive states experienced in the workplace. Although researchers have examined the impact of job boredom on important workplace outcomes, the day-to-day experience of job boredom and individual strategies to reduce its negative influence remain largely unexplored. Therefore, we examined the within-person relationships of job boredom with daily job burnout and turnover intentions, as well as two potential moderators to alleviate the impact of job boredom—psychological detachment from work during work hours and perceived cyberloafing norms. Using a daily diary study over 10 consecutive workdays (three surveys per day), we sampled 1,160 daily observations nested within 120 individuals. Hypotheses were tested using multilevel modeling while controlling for previous-day (lagged) outcome variables. Our results showed that job boredom was positively related to job burnout at the within-person level while controlling for previous-day job burnout. However, job boredom was not related to turnover intentions at the within-person level. Neither psychological detachment nor perceived cyberloafing norms attenuated the relationships of job boredom with job burnout or turnover intentions; thus, our moderation hypotheses were not supported. Rather, contrary to our prediction, we found that psychological detachment reinforced the relationship between job boredom and job burnout. We discuss the implications of our findings, study limitations, and future research directions.